GUWAHATI
A national organisation of power engineers and employees has opposed the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and said tabling it in Parliament will be an “open violation” of the Centre’s written assurance to farmers across the country.
The Bill pursued by the Ministry of Power was framed without taking the 27 lakh electricity engineers and employees in India into confidence, the Assam and Meghalaya branches of the National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers (NCCOEEE) said on Tuesday.
The committee threatened to resort to nationwide strikes if the Bill is tabled in Parliament and passed.
“After the farmers’ agitation last year, the Centre had in a letter to the United Kisan Morcha assured that the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 will not be placed in Parliament without discussion with all the stakeholders,” NCCOEEE leader Shailendra Dubey said after touring the north-eastern States to mobilise support against the proposed Bill.
Mr. Dubey is also the chairperson of All India Power Engineers’ Federation.
“The biggest stakeholders in the power sector are the electricity consumers and power employees. The Centre is now pursuing the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022 but has not held any talks with either the organisations of electricity consumer or those of the power employees on it,” he said.
“Therefore, placing the Bill unilaterally in Parliament without taking the power employees into confidence will be a clear violation of the Centre’s written assurance to the farmers and will be strongly opposed,” Mr. Dubey said.
The NCCOEEE said the objective of the Bill was to let private corporations supply electricity through the existing network of government distribution companies on which crores of rupees are spent every month.
The committee termed Power Minister R.K. Singh’s statement that consumers would be given a choice through the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 as “misleading and cheating the public”.
“This Bill will give a choice not to the consumers but to the private electricity supplying companies. It has a provision that only the government companies will have universal power supply obligation. This means only the government distribution companies will provide electricity to all categories of consumers,” the NCCOEEE said.
“Naturally, the private companies will give electricity only to the profitable industrial and commercial consumers, and government distribution companies will go into further losses by providing subsidised electricity to farmers and common consumers. Thus, the government distribution companies will by default become loss-making companies,” it said.
This will pave the way for the privatisation of the entire power distribution system, the NCCOEEE said. It cited the example of Mumbai where the “privatisation experiment” through Adani Power and Tata Power has resulted in domestic consumers shelling out ₹12-14 per unit, the highest in the country.
